Edmund Burke Quotes on Politics

Quotes

• “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  When bad men combine , the good must associate ; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle . It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country ; it is not enough that in his single person he never did an evil act , but always voted according to his conscience , and even harangued against every design which he a

• Attributed to Edmund Burke:

  “Society is indeed a contract, between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

• “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”

  Volume iii, p. 274

• Attributed to Edmund Burke:

  “Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.”

• Attributed to Edmund Burke:

  “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”

• Attributed to Edmund Burke:

  “All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for the wise to remain silent.”

• “Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.”

  An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196

• “In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, but sometimes necessary, task of subduing a rude and free people.”

  An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 215

• “War ," says Machiavel , "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.”

  Wikiquote

• “It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part; and by no means the greatest part.”

  1760s | Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 78

• “There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity — the law of nature, and of nations.”

  On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings(1794) | 28 May 1794

• “Never wholly separate in your Mind the merits of any Political Question from the Men who are concerned in it.”

  1780s | Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 47

• “We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”

  1790s | Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)

• “You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”

  Reflections on the Revolution in France(1790) | Volume iii, p. 277

• “People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”

  1770s | Letter to Charles James Fox (8 October 1777)

• “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”

  Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

• “[France is] a Country where the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the Yoke of Laws and morals.”

  1780s | Letter to William Windham (27 September 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 25

• “To the Deity must be left the task of infinite perfection, while to us poor, weak, incapable mortals, there was no rule of conduct so safe as experience.”

  1790s | Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 388

• “It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.”

  1790s | Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)

• “Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.”

  Reflections on the Revolution in France(1790)

• “To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.”

  Reflections on the Revolution in France(1790) | Volume iii, p. 497